Seattle Mariners’ Kyle Seager is an All-Star after all

After getting snubbed in the fan vote, Seattle Mariners third baseman Kyle Seager will be making the trip to next week’s All-Star Game as an injury replacement.

The Mariners and MLB announced Monday afternoon that Seager will replace injured Toronto Blue Jays first baseman Edwin Encarnacion, who was placed on the 15-day disabled list Monday with a quadriceps strain. American League manager John Farrell, of the World Series-champion Boston Red Sox, named Seager as the replacement.

Kyle Seager gets a high-five from a Mariners teammate after scoring against the Rangers on June 15 in Seattle. (Elaine Thompson/AP Photo)

It will be Seager’s first All-Star appearance since his major-league debut in 2011.

Seager, 26, has the second-best batting average among American League third basemen, batting .274 through 85 games, trailing just Adrian Beltre (.333) of the Texas Rangers. Seager also ranks second among third basemen in home runs with 13, behind Josh Donaldson (19) of the Oakland A’s.

But Seager didn’t even finish among the top eight in fan All-Star voting for third basemen, garnering fewer votes than even the Yankees’ Kelly Johnson, who is hitting a paltry .218. It goes to show that fans vote mainly on name recognition and reputation, not on actual on-field performance.

Case in point: Seager is ranked seventh among all American League position players — not just third basemen or infielders — with a 3.5 WAR (wins above replacement).

That’s one of the most popular statistics among sabermetricians, attempting to represent a player’s value over the average MLB player at his position. Mariners pitcher Felix Hernandez, for example, his ranked fourth among all MLB pitchers with a WAR of 4.0.

Seager will join Hernandez and second baseman Robinson Cano in Minneapolis next week for the Midsummer Classic. It will be the first time since 2011 that the Mariners have sent three players to the All-Star Game. (In 2011, the M’s sent three pitchers: Hernandez, Brandon League, Michael Pineda.)

Meanwhile, Seager’s younger brother Corey, a Single-A prospect in the Los Angeles Dodgers system, will also be at Target Field for the All-Star Futures Game on Sunday. The MLB All-Star Game is scheduled for next Tuesday, July 15, at Target Field in Minneapolis.